History isn’t recorded, it’s interpreted. Melissa begins her sermon this Sunday by telling about the Bible study she is co-leading on the grounds of the state capitol that compares the Confederate monuments with idolatry.
Rather than statues, we need to tell stories to one another. Stories of how God’s love extends to all of creation. Stories of grace and of uncoerced welcome.
This Sunday Melissa wove together an explanation for the Levitical rules for what meat was clean and unclean with both the current climate change crisis and our focus with A Year at the Table.
Human lust for domination over creation is the root cause of climate change. God loves the whole world and is in covenant with creation. Life belongs to God.
Melissa began her sermon talking about her many visits to A Place at the Table. Unfortunately, the first two minutes were not recorded, so we pick up from her comparison of A Place at the Table with the story of the three strangers who visit Abraham and Sarah at the oaks at Mamre. Abraham welcomes the strangers and brings Abraham and Sarah’s best for them.
What can we learn about the gathering tables in our community? Where is God present or absent? As we break bread at these tables, we’re invited to observe, to be hospitable and take part in the hospitality, and be witness to the divine presence.
Genesis 1
Melissa’s sermon was preceded by viewing a video featuring James Weldon Johnson reciting the poem The Creation. The poetry of Genesis is where we’re starting our “Year at the Table.”
Our lives are dependent upon creation, just as they’re dependent upon a loving, creative God. Every time we eat, we are reminded that we do not control the world. We are reminded that our very existence is a gift.
Melissa continued the series focused on Hebrews in this morning’s message. What is faith in the midst of political distress, in a government hellbent on terrorizing the vulnerable?
It’s the failures of the people talked about in this Hebrews passage that animates our faith to continue on. They provide hope because of their brokenness. If they can be used by God, there is hope for us. We are creatures of grace, and that can give us hope.
by Melissa Florer-Bixler
A blog entry in response to our “A Year at the Table” series.
It seemed fitting to me that we began our year of exploration and reflection on Communion practice in grace. Babette’s Feast, the first in our film series featuring movies about food and faith, is a story about grace received in a meal. It works around the tensions of mercy and commitment, of righteousness and joy, of holiness and pleasure.
In the story a young woman arrives on the shores of a small Danish fishing village. We discover that she is a refugee escaping civil war in France. She becomes the devoted servant of two elderly sisters, who in their youth, each gave up a chance at love and happiness – one through marriage the other through a singing career – in order to serve the ministry of their father, the leader of a Dutch Calvinist sect. Through a series of events, we can call them grace or chance, Babette comes into the sisters’ lives.
In the background of the film are the themes of regret and choice. How do we make choices and what do we do when we look back on regret at what we have done in our lives? Each of the characters faces these questions.
The apex of the film is a French meal cooked by Babette. We come to discover that in her previous life in France she was a celebrated chef. She wins the lottery and instead of spending the money to return to her life in France, as the sisters expect with sadness will be the result, she spends the entire sum, 10,000 francs, on a celebration meal for the remaining apostles of the sect.
The meal is grace. It is beauty and pleasure, righteousness and mercy kissing one another. Old hurts are overcome. Love that has been shamed is brought into the open. Regrets are lost in the hope and possibility of God’s constant provision, even when it is least expected.
The next day when we celebrated Communion as a church I had this scene in the back of my mind. The excess and abundance of Babette’s meal, her gratuitous and unmerited gift.
During the meal the captain, the would-be-lover of the older sister, who returned to see her once more in his old age, offers a speech. While it doesn’t capture the beauty and pleasure of the meal, the color and scent and taste that waft from the screen, it puts to words the grace that flows through the meal, a grace and joy I hope will infuse itself into our church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper:
Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!
Hebrews 4:14 – 5:10 & Matthew 26:36-40
Melissa works at clearing up misconceptions we often have and reconciling some of our notions of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament and Jesus’ life and crucifixion. We were forgiven long before we knew we needed forgiving.
This Sunday the service used the music of Patty Griffin to tell stories of a God who is present in the messiness of life. What does the Gospel of Jesus Christ have to say to those with their backs against the wall? The scriptures tell us the answer: God is there with her back against the wall, right beside them, and right beside us.
RMC has been part of an interfaith group that spends time at the NC women’s prison, celebrating birthdays and sharing times of worship.
Prisons are created to get people out of the way. They did in the day of Paul and Silas, and they do so today. As Willy Jennings has said, prisons are never about criminals; they’re about societies. They’re a tool for control and containment.
To believe in Jesus is to be set free, just as the jailer was from the jail and the prisoner from the prison.
While the passage is specifically about whether male Gentiles who followed the Way of Jesus needed to be circumcised, Melissa explains this really speaks to the broader decision-making process within the early church. We think we have difficulty coming to a consensus as a church; this was a much more volatile issue!
Note: there was some occasional static during parts of the recording. A few brief sections where it was particularly bad were removed as a result, while some was left in. Our apologies.
Melissa’s retelling of the story of Saul on the road to Damascus brings a fresh perspective. Experiencing Jesus changes us. God is no longer a set of propositions, no longer a belief system that needs to be defended by logic. Instead, faith is seen in how our life is lived.
Melissa tells us there were two very different realities that Sunday morning, three days after Jesus had been crucified. The contrast between the Jewish women and the Roman soldiers at the grave couldn’t have been greater.
The Easter story is a story of grace. It’s a reordering of life. We’re encouraged to let ourselves be loved by God and to love God in return.